More than 150 companies, including major tech organizations and online retailers, made arrangements with Facebook to have special access to users' personal data, apparently violating Facebook's privacy pledges and, potentially, federal regulations, The New York Times reports, based on a review of 270 pages of Facebook documents plus interviews with more than 50 former Facebook employees and corporate partners. Under the arrangements, partners were essentially exempt from the usual privacy rules; Netflix and Spotify were granted permission to read users' private messages, for example, and Amazon could obtain the contact information of users through their friends. The deals involved the data of hundreds of millions of users every month, and some were still active this year.

The White House may be ready to accept that Democrats are unwilling to agree to $5 billion in federal spending for President Trump's proposed border wall, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters on Tuesday. "We have other ways that we can get to that $5 billion," she said. "At the end of the day we don't want to shut down the government, we want to shut down the border." Trump was demanding the sum for a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, but Democrats said they were only willing to spend $1.6 billion on general border security. Without an agreement on federal spending, the government will shut down after Friday, which Trump said he'd be "proud" to do over the issue.

In a bipartisan vote, the Senate on Tuesday passed the First Step Act, the biggest overhaul of the federal criminal justice system in decades. The bill passed with a vote of 87-12, and was backed by conservative and liberal groups. Lawmakers spent more than a year negotiating the bill, which creates more rehabilitation programs, eases mandatory minimum sentencing, reduces the three-strike penalty from life in prison to 25 years, and lets some federal inmates earn time credits by taking part in special programs. Now, the bill moves to the House, where it also has bipartisan support. After the Senate passed the measure, President Trump tweeted that he looks "forward to signing this into law!"

The Trump Foundation has agreed to "dissolve under judicial supervision" and donate its "remaining assets" to approved charities amid a lawsuit alleging Trump used it for personal and political gain, New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood announced Tuesday. The foundation's remaining assets of about $1.7 million, per a recent tax return, will be donated to charities chosen after "review and approval by the attorney general," a press release says. Underwood filed the lawsuit in June, alleging Trump used the charity as his personal "checkbook." The lawsuit will continue as it seeks $2.8 million in restitution and "a bar on Trump and his three eldest children from serving on the boards of other New York charities," per the attorney general's statement.

Actress, director, and producer Penny Marshall died Monday night due to diabetes complications, her family said Tuesday. She was 75. Marshall is best known for her starring role as Laverne DeFazio on the Happy Days spinoff Laverne & Shirley, which ran through the 1970s and '80s. She then went on to direct the Oscar-nominated Awakenings, becoming the second woman to direct a Best Picture nominee. She also directed Big, the first film by a woman director to pass $100 million at the box office, and A League of Their Own. Marshall's most recent project was the still-forthcoming documentary of NBA star turned diplomat Dennis Rodman.